


snow day

by cilogram (orphan_account)



Category: Mission: Impossible (Movies)
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Mutual Pining, Post-Fallout, Reading, Snowed In, brief Worry about Ethan's self-care generally, brief mention of potentially unhealthy eating habits
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:35:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28319091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/cilogram
Summary: Benji and Ethan find themselves in a safe-house that's about to get cozier than expected.
Relationships: Benji Dunn/Ethan Hunt
Comments: 4
Kudos: 22





	snow day

**Author's Note:**

> for roch  
> merry christmas!

It was around six a.m. when Benji first tried the door and found he couldn’t push it open. He’d wanted to watch the sunrise. Instead, the warming glow only filtered in between the window seams, brightened by reflection in the snow, and Ethan woke to the sight of Benji standing in his socks holding a just-boiled kettle and looking defeatedly out of the window.

‘What is it, Benji?’

Ethan’s voice was lightly grainy from sleep, and quiet. Benji wanted to hear it again. 

‘Hm?’

A hint of guilt sneaked up surely as he heard Ethan clear his throat to try to speak a second time. It only sounded sleepier.

‘What is it? D’you see something?’

Benji lifted himself up off his heels for a moment and feigned peering out the window again, blinds mostly obscuring the view. He turned and crossed the cabin floor to the kitchen area, picking up two tea bags and placing them in two worn-out, white mugs.

‘Looks like a snow day.’

Ethan shifted on the couch. He pulled at the blanket around him, dragging it up to sit around his shoulders as he moved upright—albeit reluctantly, by the looks of things.

‘How is it you manage to get more sleep on a stake-out routine than in your daily life?’

At that Ethan closed his eyes, smiling slightly like a man half-dazed, or half-asleep.  
‘This isn’t daily life?’

‘I’m starting to wonder that myself…’ Benji said, though he knew it was only weakly true. Benji had a flat. Had a modest home cinema setup. Had a decent-sized bed. Ethan had… well, he wasn’t sure.

Nearby, a skillet began to sizzle a little too wildly and Benji reached for it, pulled out of those thoughts for a welcome moment. He poured half the contents—something resembling an omelet—onto a plate, and there was breakfast. Ethan walked in (Benji hadn’t heard him get up), having left the large living room and come back wearing a second blanket.

‘You made breakfast.’

He said it in the excited tone of someone who maybe hadn’t eaten breakfast in quite some time. Benji hoped very much that he had.  
‘Eggs and things. Y’know.’

‘It does look like eggs..!’ Ethan smiled widely. How he managed to use pseudo-sarcasm only ever in a kind, endearing way, Benji didn’t know, but it certainly gave him a lot to think about. Not that he wasn’t thinking a lot already.

They talked in between bites. Benji got up every now and then to check the laptop, the radar screen and various antennae. Ethan finished in record time and grabbed a book from one of the nearby shelves. For one somewhat crestfallen moment Benji considered going to sit by the computer again; give Ethan some quiet time to read. But the silence was ended by Ethan’s gentle narration as he started reading the book out loud. 

Benji found himself on the couch beside him—not strictly _beside_ beside, but rather one seat apart. He wondered vaguely if it was more polite not to stare, but then again reading aloud was sort of akin to a performance, or so he told himself, as he finished his omelet without a moment’s glance at it.

He had seen Ethan read things; seen plenty people do that. Surely unremarkable. But something about it there and then, in that moment, seemed slower and more deliberate than usual. Significant. He lost where his eyes were focussing and caught himself in another one of his what-if scenarios. What if things were just slightly different? What if Ethan would just look up and close the book and— 

He had also seen Ethan kiss, of course; kiss Julia, with sincere love and a softness that made Benji’s breath rise up and sink in his chest in a heavy sigh and a faint shiver that really told him a lot about himself, and he almost laughed out loud. He knew Ethan, and he knew he wasn’t just a soft kind of guy but maybe the softest; someone who’d stare into your eyes and honest-to-god just hold your hand if you asked him to. Who’d walk with you in the rain and smile when you smiled.  
Someone who’d sit in the quiet of a snowed-in lodge with you and read from one of a stranger’s novels in his kindest voice.

Ethan turned page forty-seven, and the words in each paragraph passed through him easily like notes drifting from a harp. Though his mind was full with pictures from the scene, he noticed when Benji put down his plate onto the wooden chest, but he didn’t dare look up. Didn’t glance when Benji lifted his feet up from the floor to rest on the sofa, nor when he adjusted his cardigan to sit more loosely open. But he did catch it, from his periphery. He read a line more, then paused.

‘You really don’t feel it, huh?’ His smile was playful (he hoped).

Another pause. For all his intellect, Benji didn’t quite compute.

‘Oh, the cold?’ he said finally, ‘Nah…can’t say I do.’ 

A small shake of his head. Ethan’s swam thinking about it. His smile widened and he had to look down again at the book, anywhere but right at Benji, where he felt as if his heart shone out a bright light that said _I can’t stop looking at you. I love you and I can’t stop looking-_

He cleared his throat and subdued his smile. _’Autumn came, and the sycamores of the city of pale towers, that were sheltered from the sea winds by its high wall, dropped leaves like the gold manufactured by their owners. And the wild salt geese streamed among the pale towers, and after them the ossifrage and the lammergeier.’_

‘The what?’

‘The uh… the ossifraje. You know. Ossifrag? Oss… okay Benji you got me, I don’t know either.’  
And the smile came again, faster that time, and he felt he might burst if he tried to conceal it.

Benji broke into laughter, almost soundless at first but wholehearted; the unrestrained kind of laugh he had that Ethan loved and that made his eyes crease into adorable lines. Affection lay unfiltered on Ethan’s face as he said, ‘You read it, then.’

‘I’m no good at the narrator voice,’ is what Benji replied; _I want to hear you read it_ , is what he thought.

‘And, I want to hear you read it. C’mon. Narrative consistency and all that.’

His heart raced slightly. He’d let himself say it. He could have punched the air in victory.

Ethan turned back to the book and gave a quick sideways glance back at Benji, smiling as he did and picking up from the next sentence. His hair was still ruffled from sleep and his eyes, fixed in concentration, began scanning the pages a little self-consciously then, at least from what Benji could guess. 

There was an old man in the story, and when Ethan again put on his old man voice, he looked up at Benji as if addressing him, and only quickly glanced down to check his lines, and Benji couldn’t help but giggle at the sight of it, Ethan in his blankets so sincerely telling him about the hooded ones who grew impatient for Benji to save them.

‘But how can I save them? Old man, tell me—'

‘No no no, Benji, it’s… look here.’ Ethan scooted over on the couch until they were shoulder-to-shoulder, warm edges of their bodies pressing together gently. ‘You don’t say that, you say this line here…’ and he pointed to the dialogue on the page.

‘Ah!’ Benji said, barely able to focus with Ethan’s arm touching his own his all the way down to their wrists, the other holding the book for them to share. He read the line. And the next, which made his face warm so quickly he thought Ethan might be able to feel it.

They read until the story was finished. Their tea had grown cold where it sat in their mugs, untouched on the bare floorboards. Ethan was painfully aware that, as the one holding the book, he had no real excuse not to move back now the story was finished. And yet he couldn’t. 

Benji’s breath puffed lightly against his cheek, warm in the freezing cold of the room.

‘What a terrible ending..!’

‘Right?’

It was Ethan’s incredulity that made Benji smile that time. Ever-expressive. He couldn’t see from that angle but he imagined Ethan’s brows moving closer together in deep thought, the way they sometimes did. He watched him turned the book over; the worn brown leather on the back looked soft, and as a blatant excuse he reached out to feel it, and there was some overlap of their hands, then.

And as if nothing were at all strange, Ethan gave no reaction, except for a small exhale and an accaptance of fate— that is to say, he sank his weight down that little bit more and rested his head on Benji’s shoulder.


End file.
